The New Triumph Trophy – Monkey See Monkey Do?

OK the jokey headline is because I’m kinda miffed at the latest Triumph spotted by MCN’s bush twitching photographers (though you have to wonder how many of theses are really spy shots, right road, right time, nobody at the toilet or asleep in their car etc!)

Supposedly the image below is the new 2011 version of the Triumph Trophy, but its resemblance to BMW’s RT1200 tourer is uncanny and is either a cunning disguise to test the bike’s core components, or a staggerlying poor effort on behalf of Triumphs designers.

I like the BMW battleship and I’ve never heard a bad word said about it beyond regular boxer engined quirks of thirsty on oil etc.  But, and I hope I’m wrong about this, it seems Triumph have gone from taking on BMW’s market leading bikes with their own efforts, to blatantly copying the German company’s entire range.  That’s not innovation or thinking outside the box to out-do a competitor, that’s copying for which in the good old days you got caned and detention after school.

I like the new Tiger 800 and am seriously considering getting one over the F800 GS as it does have some worthwhile features that mark it apart.  The Trophy by contrast appears to be a poor act of ‘monkey see monkey do’ and hope for the best.  Yes all brands have sports tourers, adventure bikes, tourers etc all with simlar specs, but I can tell a Super Tenere apart from a BMW GS1200, Ducati Multistrada, or a Honda Crosstourer.

Come on Triumph tell me it’s just a test and something funky is on the drawing board for the New Year.